In what will likely be considered a controversial move by some fans, senior director of ticket sales David Siegel, announced on Tuesday that the Dodgers are expanding their variable ticket pricing program for single-game tickets. The intent of this expansion is to be more fan friendly and to follow the industry precedent that most teams already adhere to.
A main objective of this new plan is to encourage more fans to become season ticket holders. In comparison, purchasing season tickets results in an overall savings for fans as opposed to buying the tickets individually throughout the season.
“We believe the pricing encourages fans to explore the benefits of being a season-seat holder,” said Siegel, who added that season-ticket sales have been very strong.
The new program will involve four separate tiers of pricing and is notated by stars. Four-starred games will be the most expensive tiers and include six separate games — Opening Day on April 1st against the San Francisco Giants, July 30th and 31st when the New York Yankees come to town and August 23-25 when the Dodgers host the Boston Red Sox. Prices for these games in the upper deck will be $30 each.
All the three-star games coincide with a promotional giveaway, including all of the bobblehead giveaways that fans love. They also include all games that are scheduled to have a fireworks show at the conclusion of the game. For this tier of games, the price drops slightly to between $20 and $26 for the same upper deck tickets. In all, there are 26 games that are three-star games.
There are 33 games that fall into the two-star tier of the Dodgers’ pricing plan, 25 of which are for games that offer the remaining 25 promotions on the schedule and range in price from $10 to $16.
Only one of the one-star games fall on a day other then a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and drop in price from $8 to $16 and includes one exhibition game.
The prices for the one-tier games represents a price decrease from last season when those same tickets cost $13 per game. This means that 20 percent of the games in 2013 will actually be at a decreased price from last season. The Dodgers hope will help entice fans to come out to some of those games.
These prices and tiers are now set in stone and will not change later in the season, even if a game becomes more appealing because of a pennant race, pitching matchup or any mid-season acquisitions.
This isn’t the first time that the Dodgers have instituted variable pricing. In the past they have done so for Opening Day games, Friday and Saturday night games as well as Vin Scully and Sandy Koufax bobblehead nights. In 2010 when the New York Yankees came to Dodger Stadium the last time, the Dodgers also used variable ticket pricing, only allowing Yankees tickets to be purchased as part of a season-ticket mini plan.
The Dodgers also previously had different pricing plans for advanced purchases, game-day ticket sales and Friday/Saturday games, but that policy has been eliminated with the new tiered system.
The fans who traditionally sit in the upper deck, reserved level and pavilions will be the ones most greatly affected by the new pricing with the largest increase in price for single-game tickets.
This new pricing system is not to be confused with a similar system called dynamic pricing, which hotels and airlines use in their ticket sales. under that sort of system, prices for every date fluctuate up and down, depending on demand. As more tickets are sold, the price goes up. The Dodgers have vowed not to change the price of tickets now that they have released this pricing information.
“Our goal was to keep Dodger games as accessible to families as we could and to remain the most affordable ticket in all of L.A. sports, and we believe we achieved that with our variable pricing,” said Siegel.
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